Hey guys, just wanted to get some advice. Which is the cheapest online render farm? Which one do you use? They are all a little bit like the online airline ticket purchase companies offering discounts only after a price quote and stuff.

I have 1960 frames at 25min per frame on the i7 2600 4 core 3.7Ghz processor. So it isn't a massive quantity.

I've used REBUS, and they are fantastic. Not the cheapest, but incredibly reliable, and easy to use.
There was one that was set up specifically for C4D that was really cheap...a search on the forums should come up with something.

Depends on the software you use ... for 3ds max or Blender I would recommend RenderFlow www.renderflow.com - they worked fine for me, price was ok and what I liked most was that they offer a demo account where I could test their features for free first ...

How about building your own farm on amazon they have 450000 nodes I think it was. You install your own licenses and render away.
Ive done this many times.

I just checked, dual quad cores spot instance for $0.45 pr hour ( 8 buckets )
If you can grind on linux then you get 8 buckets for $0.216 pr hour

See Jud Pratts videos on "how to make your own farm on amazon ec2"HERE

quote Jud Pratt "you can build your own renderfarm with render core costs as low as $0.06 per core hour."

Can you beat that?
( yes this is most deffinatly a competition question )

if you can, please write. I always look for better solutions. especially something like I got right now ( ec2 ) I can have 100% control over with noone interfearing with my stuff ( an oldschool farm manager forexample or worse )
( worse here clearly indicates something went wrong the day I stoped using anything someone else controls, and no, "someone else" is not in same league as amazon ec2 )

EC charge for the network traffic and you pay full hours even you used just the first 2minutes
its very difficult to get a price per core hour here

EC is always cheaper since they not pay for mental ray , vray ... but at Amazon is no admin you can call for help nor any 3d specialist
they give you hardware only and in case of problems you are doomed aswell you need to care and Admin all yourself

A pure renderfarm service do that for you and offer immidently access
with the Rebus Farminizer submit plugin its impossible to have missing textures or other problems you will have at EC
our workflow is super simple and bullet proof - just one click to start a render and no EC load image hasslehttp://www.rebusfarm.net/index.php/...video-tutorials

Amazon charge a micro fee for transfering from the cluster to an FTP. you can upload any amount of data you want for free. Just to put that in the right perspective.

I do also note building your own farm there is not as easy as having someone else doing it for you and that costs, naturally. but once it done, its rolling.

Scene issues with missing textures is a user error and I wouldnt recommend anyone to start building their own farm, home or on amazon ( same infrastructure both places ) if missing bitmaps is a problem.

You can build a script that uses Amazon ec2 API that sends your scene from local to cloud in 1 click too.

You can also harnes via VPN: Distributed bucket rendering directly on your screen, however a solid line should be accounted for in this type of setup.

You can make this system for yourself. I have talked to autodesk about selling render power on ec2 via Dev Pay and they TOTALY denied that fits into their EULA.

This makes me question how THIS company pulls their service off as that is essentially exactly the setup I have illustrated for Autodesk. oh and btw, they rip you off too, considering you can hack it together yourself.

I made a concept illustration of the setup and attached it to this post for inspection.

Originally Posted by QuakeMarine1:with the Rebus Farminizer submit plugin its impossible to have missing textures

Except for the jobs I launched last week where despite uploading every texture file it claimed to need, the render would fail every time because it in fact often doesnt upload everything it needs. Instead im left to hunt around for some ftp details and manually upload them to fix the job.

Rebus is a nice farm, but the all in one plugin which does everything for you and never fails, often doesnt deliver.

Originally Posted by imashination:Except for the jobs I launched last week where despite uploading every texture file it claimed to need, the render would fail every time because it in fact often doesnt upload everything it needs.

i not get your point - you say you had missing textures and job fail ?

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